Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
at Cambridge and Oxford, under the intellectual and social governance of
what Robert Lowe once called a “clerical gerontocracy,” were seeking the
“plebian” Huxley's council by the time he reached middle age.
16
Hu xley's piv-
otal role in such reforms is evidenced by the fact that one whole volume of
the nine topics making up his
Selected Works
is comprised of essays on edu-
cation. Indirectly, at least, this is also a concern of the two volumes in this
set devoted to religious topics. Huxley's assaults against orthodoxy never
represented an antireligious campaign so much as an anti-institutional one,
his unceasing protest against the powerful hold of the English clergy on
British education.
His devotion to this broader cause undoubtedly reflected the frustra-
tions of his own youth. When he sailed into Devonport in October of 1850,
returning from a four-year tour of duty in the British navy as assistant sur-
geon and naturalist, he discovered that he had already earned scientific
fame in absentia. This was for a paper on sea medusae and polyps mailed
to the Royal Society from his cramped quarters aboard the HMS
Rattle-
snake
as it surveyed the coasts of Australia and New Guinea. Before another
year was out, the society had elected him a fellow at merely twenty-six years
of age. But he could find no work. Huxley had in some sense committed
himself to a profession that did not yet exist—or at least one that was slowly
passing from one life into the next. He had come of age at the tail end of
a period when science was still dominated by clergymen and gentleman
amateurs and still sanctioned by the worldviews and normative frameworks
these privileged groups upheld. This was an intellectual culture that had
been able to sustain scientific inquiry for two hundred years, and it had
functioned well enough for Huxley's seniors, men like Richard Owen with
Tory patronage, and gentlemen scientists like Darwin who drew upon a sub-
stantial inheritance. But it made almost no room for middle-class aspirants
lacking similar connections or financial means.
By midcentury new resources were becoming available that would
broaden and deepen scientific activity in England as power and money rap-
idly shifted out of the pockets of the upper classes and into the hands of
capitalists and industrialists, but science had not yet positioned itself to
benefit from this transformation. In 1850, Huxley found himself lost in
the shuffle and was forced to suffer through four exasperating years before
securing a scientific position. Seized by desperation and depression, he had
even contemplated abandoning science for a naval career. “To attempt to
live by any scientific pursuit is a farce,” he complained in 1851 to the fiancée
he had left behind in Sydney.
